Music Monday 17th December 2018

A few years ago, when my partner had a big birthday, I bought him a trip to London as a present. Neither of us had ever been to London before, so it was all very exciting.

What we wanted to do most of all while in such a big, famous city was to enjoy some of its live music. You’d think it’s easy, wouldn’t you?

For the few days we were there, we couldn’t find any gigs we were interested in seeing. In the end, I just looked up every show happening while we were there and stumbled upon a Finnish folk metal band called Korpiklaani. We looked them up on YouTube, decided that they were worth seeing and went along.

My partner is more of a metal fan than I am, so he was converted straightaway. I’m generally speaking not into metal although I make exceptions, but Korpiklaani was excellent live, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit of national pride as I watched the people in the sold-out venue jam along. Patriotism can take strange forms.

While this - and many of their other songs - have English versions, I decided to share the authentic Finnish version.